Royal Mail makes its political headache worse

theguardian.com:

S imon Thompson’s second outing before the business select committee wasn’t much of an improvement on the first. Royal Mail’s chief executive was less abrasive than in January, which at least suggested he’d taken advice on how not to instantly annoy a crew of MPs. But the problem was still his answers.

On the troubled issues of PDAs – the “postal digital assistant” devices carried by posties on delivery rounds – Thompson had to admit that performance data had been used in 16 conduct cases. For a tool that is supposed to be used solely for balancing workloads, that sounded to the MPs like a breach of corporate policy. On sick pay, it was hard to tell what – if any – provision Royal Mail had made for workers unable to navigate the herculean task of getting an appointment with a GP and thus a sicknote.

The tangle that may have the most serious consequences regulatory-wise, however, related to the accusation that staff were being instructed to prioritise the delivery of parcels over letters. As a commercial policy, such an approach wouldn’t be silly: parcels represent a market that is growing; letters have been in steady decline since privatisation in 2013.

The difficulty, of course, is that there is meant to be no prioritisation. The USO, or universal service obligation, requires Royal Mail to deliver letters six days a week to every address in the land if necessary. Ofcom granted a get-out during the pandemic due to staff absence, but that period is over. The committee chair, Darren Jones, was able to display multiple recent instances of workplace notices seemingly telling staff to get the parcels out of the door and not bother too much about the letters.

“At the moment we have industrial action; there is a different